A Bluffers’ Guide to: Drone

Like, who? It’s rooted in early electronic music from the 60s by the likes of Brian Eno, Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler.

So it’s that ambient stuff? Pretty much, except not quite as uplifting.

Sounds boring. Sell it to me. Well that’s kind of the point. Most of the genre is built around long tracks of a single note.

A single note? Often, but sometimes there are too many layers to count. It’s not static. The sound is constantly morphing, just enough to hold your interest.

Errgh. Yes. But, it’s perfect chill out music, except for the extreme noise stuff. You probably want to avoid people like Prurient, Russell Haswell and SUNN o))) unless you like whole albums of screaming and guitar feedback.

Check out our selection of five bona fide bangers:

‘Hatred of Music I’ – Tim Hecker

‘Relocation.Reconstruction’ – Yann Novak

‘Sovereign’ – Yellow Swans

‘City Nightlights’ – relapxych.0

‘Mass Transit Railway’ – Monolake

Hear all these tracks, and more, on the accompanying Spotify playlist.